CMS Releases 2024 Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program Proposed Rule
This month, CMS released the 2024 Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program proposed rule. Here are some of the top line QPP items for NACOR participants:
Performance Categories/Policy
- There are no changes to the Anesthesia measure set.
- There are no changes to current performance category weights (Quality 30%, Cost 30%, Promoting Interoperability 25% and Improvement Activities 15%)
- 2024 Performance Threshold is proposed to be increased to 82 points.
MIPS Value Pathways
- Two new QCDR measures are proposed for inclusion in the Anesthesia MVP: ABG44: Low Flow Inhalational General Anesthesia and EPREOP31: Intraoperative Hypotension among Non-Emergent Noncardiac Surgical Cases
- One MIPS measure is being proposed for the Anesthesia MVP: Q487: Screening for Social Drivers of Health
- There is one new Improvement activity added to the Anesthesia MVP: IA_MVP: Practice-Wide Quality Improvement in MIPS Value Pathways
Additionally, CMS is proposing to reduce the targeted review period to 30 days following the release of the final scores.
For more information, please refer to ASA’s Washington Alert on the release of CMS’ rule.
2022 MIPS Final Score Preview
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have opened their Final Score Preview period for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). This period allows authorized individuals from participating groups to preview their scores before final performance feedback and payment adjustments are released in August 2023.
AQI recommends that authorized participating members preview their scores by signing into the Quality Payment Program (QPP) website. With any questions or concerns, MIPS participants can contact CMS’ QPP Service Center at (Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. - 8 p.m. ET) at 1-866-288-8292 or by e-mail at: QPP@cms.hhs.gov.
Click here to access CMS’ Frequently Asked Questions document on the 2022 MIPS Final Score Preview.
With any questions, please email askaqi@asahq.org.
Ready to submit data? Check your Ftp Access
As a reminder, ftp accounts are inactivated after 90 days of non-use. If your account is locked, please submit a help desk ticket by emailing nacorsupport@asahq.org.
Schedule a Reminder to Review Your NACOR Dashboard
AQI encourages physician and staff quality champions to review their group’s NACOR dashboard each month. Routine dashboard reviews will help champions monitor your group’s performance as well as pinpoint any problems or errors with submitted data files.
If your group is reporting MIPS, data completeness requirements for 2023 include:
- Submitting 12 months of data (January – December 2023).
- Reporting a minimum of six measures with at least one outcome or high priority measure. For reporting a MIPS Value Pathway (MVP), you must report at least four measures from the MVP measure set.
- Ensuring each measure has at least a 20-case minimum.
- Reporting at least 70% of all eligible cases across all payers for each measure reported.
As a reminder, Section 8 of the Addendum for Quality Reporting to the NACOR Participation Agreement states that your practice "and each EC agree, and Participant shall require each EC, to review his/her measure results in AQI at least four times a year and provide timely feedback to AQI on the measures that will be reported on the EC's behalf."
If there are questions about the dashboard results, submit a ticket to nacorsupport@asahq.org.
Add Anesthesiology-specific QCDR Measures to your 2023 MIPS Dashboard
As you prepare for MIPS 2023 reporting with NACOR, please consider adding anesthesiology specialty-specific QCDR measures to your dashboard. NACOR offers a suite of specialty measures. Since CMS picks your 7 highest scoring measures, you may add any number of QCDR measures to your submission and ensure your anesthesiology measures remain in the MIPS program.
NACOR has quality measures that address the specialty care your practice provides and by engaging with these measures, you help build the data that may be used for research, all while diversifying your MIPS measure portfolio.
If you specialize in cardiology, consider submitting data on AQI18 and AQI49 which are at risk for reapproval because of low participation. If you wish to focus on geriatric patients, please consider reporting data on AQI67. And if you work in an ambulatory setting, please consider adding AQI71 to your list of 2023 measures. Please review NACOR's QCDR measures and add QCDR measures to your dashboard today.